Nyad quits swim after storm, jellyfish stings

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Photos:Diana Nyad swim cut short

Diana Nyad's fourth attempt – Endurance swimmer Diana Nyad's latest attempt to swim across the Straits of Florida ended Tuesday morning after severe jellyfish stings and a lightning storm put her off course, her team said.

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Photos:Diana Nyad swim cut short

Diana Nyad's fourth attempt – Nyad was making her fourth attempt to swim across the Straits of Florida. The full distance from Havana, Cuba, to Key West, Florida, is 103 miles.

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Photos:Diana Nyad swim cut short

Diana Nyad's fourth attempt – Nyad had been in the water for 60 hours and was about halfway through her swim from Cuba to Florida.

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Diana Nyad's fourth attempt – Nyad began her swim at the Ernest Hemingway Nautical Club in Havana, Cuba, on Saturday, August 18.

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Diana Nyad's fourth attempt – Nyad, left, prepares for her departure. Nyad's first attempt to cross the Straits of Florida was in 1978, when rough seas left her battered, delirious and less than halfway to her goal.

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Diana Nyad's fourth attempt – Nyad gestures before her embarking on her journey.

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Diana Nyad's fourth attempt – After jumping into the waters off Havana on Saturday afternoon -- a day earlier than originally planned -- Nyad had swum nearly 28 statute miles as of Sunday evening, putting in 50 strokes a minute, her blog reported.

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Diana Nyad's fourth attempt – Endurance swimmer Nyad pauses for a rest and hydration with her support crew in the Florida Straits between Cuba and the Florida Keys on Sunday, August 19.

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Diana Nyad's fourth attempt – Nyad braves the water without a shark cage, relying on electronic shark repellent and a team of divers to keep them away.

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Diana Nyad's fourth attempt – After reportedly being stung by a jellyfish, Nyad takes a break.

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Diana Nyad's fourth attempt – Diana Nyad swims off Havana on Saturday, as she begins a more than 100-mile trip across the Florida Straits to the Florida Keys.

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Story highlights

Diana Nyad performed a "monumental and extremely dangerous" feat

She was about halfway through her swim when she exited the water

"Nobody in the world would even attempt this, but we did. That's huge," her team says

She had been blown off course by a storm, the team said

Endurance swimmer Diana Nyad's latest attempt to swim across the Straits of Florida ended Tuesday morning after severe jellyfish stings and a lightning storm put her off course, her team said.

She had been in the water for 60 hours and was about halfway through her swim from Cuba to Florida.

Nyad was stung by jellyfish overnight, and a major lightning storm put anyone in the water in extreme danger, said Mark Sollinger, Nyad's operations chief. He said the 62-year-old exhausted swimmer was pulled out as the dangers mounted.

"With all the threats continuing, Diana decided that it was not a risk that we wanted to take," Sollinger said.

Nyad's lips and face are swollen, but she is holding up "as well as someone who just spent 63 hours" performing a "monumental and extremely dangerous" feat, Sollinger told CNN's "Starting Point with Soledad O'Brien."

Nyad's first attempt to cross the Straits of Florida was in 1978, when rough seas left her battered, delirious and less than halfway toward her goal.

She tried again twice last year, but her efforts ended after an 11-hour asthma attack and jellyfish stings.

Nyad insisted Friday she was ready to try it again. "I'm feeling tremendous inner pressure that this has got to be it, this has got to be the last time," she said.

Nyad was swimming without a shark cage, relying on electronic shark repellent and a team of divers to keep the predators away.

In the 1970s, she won multiple swimming marathons and was one of the first women to swim around the island of Manhattan. She holds the world's record for longest ocean swim -- 102.5 miles from Bimini in the Bahamas to Jupiter, Florida.

Nyad said she was 8 years old when she first dreamed about swimming across the Straits of Florida. At the time, she was in Cuba on a trip from her home in Florida in the 1950s, before Fidel Castro led a Communist takeover in Cuba and the country's relations with the United States soured.

"I used to stand on the beach and I said to my mother, 'I wonder if anybody could swim over there,'" Nyad recalled saying while pointing to the Keys.

In her 60s, she says, she still feels "vital (and) powerful" -- and definitely "not old." A successful swim ideally will inspire people her age and older not to let their age hinder them, Nyad said.

"When I walk up on that shore in Florida, I want millions of those AARP sisters and brothers to look at me and say, 'I'm going to go write that novel I thought it was too late to do. I'm going to go work in Africa on that farm that those people need help at. I'm going to adopt a child. It's not too late, I can still live my dreams,' " she had said.